And now some history..

Santorini’s history is not only history of people. It is history of a land that has the admirable privilege of evolving on a normal basis, even to this day. For one to understand such an essential issue, must realize that there was a time when the Cyclades resided in the Aegean, absent Santorini.

Santorini, according to Greek mythology, originated from a clod of earth presented to the Argonauts by greek-god Triton, son of Poseidon and Amphitrite. According to Herodotus, the island was primarily called “Strongyle” (the round one), because of its circular shape.
Dorians, Phoenicians, Venetians and Turks occupied Santorini, but its most influential early inhabitants were the Minoans. They came from Crete sometime between 2000 and 1600 BC. The first settlers called the island “Kallisti” (the beautiful one), until the volcanic eruption around 1500 BC, which destroyed the island and together the great Minoan civilization of Crete.
The whole island was buried under a thick layer of pumice, which at many points is over 30 meters deep. The catastrophe must have been accompanied by enormous tidal waves (tsunamis), believed to have reached at height of 210m before slamming the Aegean shores, and causing the center of the island to sink, leaving Caldera with high cliffs. After the eruption of the volcano, the island remained uninhabited for about two centuries.
Another theory that has fired the imaginations of writers, artists and mystics and also being a top debate between archaeologists and scholars, postulates that the island was part of the mythical lost continent of Atlantis, the “Happy Isle”.